The famous director Zhang Yimou's movie "Sniper" will meet with everyone on the first day of the Spring Festival this year. Military fans among movie fans are very much looking forward to it, and so am I.
Suddenly I remembered a photo I had seen many years ago, called "Crying Machine Gunner", which could be associated with Zhang Yimou's movie "Sniper".
In September 1950, American war correspondent David Douglas Duncan took this photograph on a battlefield in the Korean War. The photo appeared on the cover of Lif magazine in the United States.
In the photo, Corporal Leonard Hayworth of the U.S. First Marine Division had just fought a battle with the Chinese Volunteers, which was very tragic, and his squad was killed except for him and another wounded. During the battle interval, the exhausted American soldier was disheveled, his eyes sluggish, and tears of weeping remained on his cheeks. War correspondents saw this scene, captured him, and were discovered by the American "Lif" and published as a cover. Leonard Hayworth himself, along with his crying expression, is remembered by many, and he suddenly became a "celebrity" on the Korean battlefield.
Just when many Americans wanted a chance to witness the 22-year-old machine gunner, on September 24, a dozen days after being photographed by war photographers, he was shot by volunteer snipers on his position. The photo was left behind, and the people were gone!
Speaking of Chinese the Civilian Volunteers were in the snipers, american soldiers would shudder, and I don't know how many people were killed in the "cold gun" campaign carried out by the volunteers. During the Period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, sharpshooters were full of talented people, emerging one after another, making outstanding achievements in battle, and achieving fruitful results.
Zhang Taofang, known as the "first sharpshooter" of the volunteer army, killed 214 enemy enemies with 436 bullets in 32 days, an average of 2.03 bullets. Zou Xixiang, on the Shangganling position, composed the most wonderful myth in the history of Chinese sniping, killing 203 enemies with 206 bullets.
According to records, in the Battle of Shangganling, on the 537.7 Beishan position held by the 135th Regiment of the Volunteer Army, the volunteer army annihilated a total of 3558 enemy troops with cold guns, and the US military history called the Shangganling 537.7 Beishan position "Sniper Ridge". From May 1952 to July 1953 alone, the Volunteer Army killed and wounded more than 52,000 UN troops in the "Cold Gun and Cold Artillery" campaign on the entire battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
